Kent County Council has published its maps for the project to bring superfast
broadband to a good chunk of the counties premises. The maps split the roll-out
into eight phases covering January 2014 to December 2015 when the project
should complete.

The maps reveal initially the current picture and a progress chart to show
what sort of benefit each phase should be, alas the maps are a pretty low
resolution squeezing Kent into 640 x 453 pixels so it will be impossible to
identify individual villages.

Phase

Date

%'age with fibre based option

One

Jan 2014 - June 2014

78%

Two

April 2014 to Sept 2014

81%

Three

July 2014 to Dec 2014

84%

Four

Oct 2013 to March 2015

87%

Five

Jan 2015 to June 2015

90%

Six

April 2015 to Sept 2015

92%

Seven

July 2015 to Dec 2015

96%

Eight

July 2015 to Dec 2015

96%No extra fibre based services as this last phase will be
delivery of basic USC level service

Kent CC had intention of reaching a figure of 91% of premises with a
superfast broadband option and by pushing fibre based coverage to 96% this
allows for the variation in speed due to distance from the cabinet for the
predominantly FTTC based roll-out.

As with other counties the slowest and most rural areas are left to the end,
and while very annoying one presumes the County and BT is gambling on the
project delivering under budget or showing high uptake and thus allowing
funding to go further into the rural areas with fibre based services.

Update 14:30 There is a postcode checker on the Kent website but be aware rather
than drilling down to the full postcode it returns a result for a wider area,
e.g. TN15 0SN will give results for all TN15 0SA through to TN15 0SZ
postcodes.

Comments

Posted by
gmoorc over 3 years ago
There is a post code checker on their site but I have to question its accuracy.

For CT187P it is saying Phase 2, work to commence between 04/14 and 09/14 however all but 2 of the cabinets are already installed and powered and one of those is being done this week.

Posted by
R0NSKI over 3 years ago
I just tried the postcode checker once I'd found it, for a cabinet I know wasn't planned.

It seems to strip the last letter from the postcode, so it is not very accurate at all, I know other cabinets in that are are enabled.It did say that area is planned for Phase 7 and work should start between July 2015 and November 2015. So Percy Avenue Kinsgate looks like it still has two years to wait.

Posted by
Plankton1066 over 3 years ago
You have to laugh at the resolution of the maps. Kent & BDUK have given BT £19.5M and instead of a "plan" of what they are going to get for this massive pile of cash, they get a map pulled out of a road atlas coloured in by a child.

Posted by
andrew ( staff member)
over 3 years ago
The postcode checker drops the last digit e.g. type in TN15 0SN and it will return results for the larger TN15 0SA to TN15 0SZ range.

Posted by
Michael_Chare over 3 years ago
The only good thing about the maps is that they show a few main roads.
With regards to the post code checker, it returns results for post code sectors, which in the above example would be TN15 0

Posted by
timmay over 3 years ago
The checker appears to strip off the last TWO letters.

The same result, and number of properties is gives for ME13 9A, ME13 9P and ME13 9S!

No accuracy at all and subject to change!

Posted by
lenham343 over 3 years ago
While superfast won't be going into a lot of the North Downs in these plans - it seems it will be available out in the Thames estuary!! (Phase 7, north of the Isle of Grain)

Posted by
mrartist over 3 years ago
I already have fibre (Canterbury) but looked at the postcode checker and it says after roll out: "100% of premises should get fibre/superfast broadband" and "0% of premises should get basic broadband". It seems wrong to say no one can get basic broadband?

I then tried their speedchecker link (via www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk) which gives a completely wrong result showing 23Mbits down and 7Mb up. My service is 80/20 and actual results are close to that (70/18). If I go directly to broadbandspeedchecker (not through KCC page), I get 374Mbits down and 15 up - 374 download, I wish !!!

Posted by
mgsport over 3 years ago
I agree that this information on its own is not that useful but www.doogal.co.uk (provides UK coverage) can provide a CSV download of the numbers of households at postcode sector level which is within the ball park number provided by BT.

Using the above example of TN15 0

see http://www.doogal.co.uk/UKPostcodes.php?Search=TN15%200

However what I found great was that a KML file can also be downloaded and subsequently uploaded into Google Earth to provide a much more interesting pictorial view of the postcodes.